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ArcebU
September 22nd, 2017, 19:54
Hello,
Reading some of the UA material on feats, I noticed a few things:


They have a pattern of general race feat and then a specific sub-race feat where applicable.
Aasimar and Eladrin were not mentioned since everything seemed to be PHB
A few of the race feats seemed more like they should have been on the race already or were alien to the race they were on.


For this experiment, I will be making some observations of Fey Teleport and Human Determination before throwing out some ideas for feats specific to Aasimar or Eladrin.

However, before all of that the philosophy of feats as I understand it in 5e *was to add depth to the character. 1v1ing a NPC with brawler or grappler can be as surprising as it is intense and adds color to the world, this works both ways. With that, said feats come with certain expectations normally:


They are the result of training.
They add new, break, or support existing mechanics.



Feats have a wide breath for variety and so I am assuming my expectations were wrong given this UA’s direction. Nevertheless, for the sake of being as terse as possible I will assume I was right and move on.

Human Determination –
A brief look at humans show that they do not really need skill points though it is nice; PC’s who pick humans tend to do so for the +1 to everything. The reason for that is usually they rolled stats and ended up with a majority of odd numbers. Again, this seems more like something the race should have had, if this were human specific, there would be a lot more reason to consider human over human variant. However, it is not and I am pressed to see why anyone would pick this over Lucky or Resilient.

Fey Teleport –
You turn your high elf into an Eladrin. Every edition either clarifies or blurs the line between High Elves and Eladrin. I am left wondering if Eladrins actually exist or if they are elves without the opioid addiction. This feat is silly but it is UA so yea… nothing more to say.


Aasimar – I decided to go with only Aasimar here as I am only working with what is in the DMG. If you are using Volo Aasimar then feel free to share your ideas.

Divine Attrition –

Requirement: Aasimar

After learning how best to destroy your sworn enemies you may select one creature type from demon, undead or monstrosity. You gain advantage on any attacks against an evil creature of that type.

When you would suffer damage from that creature type once per round you may half that damage.

You can reroll any save or skill check against that creature’s once taking any dice roll you prefer, you can do this once per short rest.

This feature can be selected multiple times, each time increasing the number of times you may reroll saves or skill checks by one but each creature type may be selected only once.


Eladrin – I really doubt any future material featuring Eladrin will ever be released, I kind of think if it was going to happen it would have happened already. But given what they did with the UA I’m really thinking 5e is going down the path of Eladrin basically being High-Elves again. The confusion is avoidable but whatever.

Eladrin Skirmish –

Requirements: Eladrin

You increase your Dexterity or Intelligence by 1.

Your martial training has borne fruit: When you cast misty step as a racial ability if your destination is within melee range of an enemy you may make a melee weapon attack against them as a free action. If you hit the target, it cannot make opportunity attacks against you until the end of its turn.

When a creature within 30-feet attacks you with a weapon or spell, you may as a reaction add +1 to your AC. If the attack would miss or is saved against (after any damage or effect) you may cast misty step.

Your racial use of misty step now consumes half your movement and recovers after one minute.



With that done, any advice or criticisms for things I might have not considered feel free to let me know. As of now I'm not sure how far I'm going to take this experiment but making feats seem to be pretty fun.

I hope that the feats I wrote here come across more as feats that are only possible because of training and the race you chose rather than additions to the race that should have been there or are totally alien to the race.

I was actually thinking of doing some kind of channel divinity for the aasmir but it was too long winded.

ArcebU
October 5th, 2017, 19:18
I have gotten 0 feedback about Aasmir so I’ll assume everything there was fine but I did get a few suggestions about Eladrin.

I made a change as a result which is to add a 1-minute CD to it.

The implications of Misty Step are mostly in how it is applied out of combat because it is a utility spell mostly. Here are the parts of the feat and how it balances originally versus now.

Misty Step – A useful teleport that requires sight and a verbal component; its main implications are utility based and so I reduced the characters movement by half when they used this ability. This makes it asymmetrically competitive with feats like mobility.

Attribute Increase – After taking away Misty Step per round it only made sense to put this here.

Bonus Action – When crafting this I thought about what High-Elves have racially. They have cantrips and they can potentially misty step with their new feat and do shocking grasp which scales per their level but would consume an action. Misty Step does not scale with your level so the attack at the end from this feat was meant as a way of showing the finesse an Eladrin has in its martial ability more than anything else. The extra damage is nice for sure but the ability to move around the battlefield for 45-feet and 30 of that being a teleport is better.

Reaction – It’s important to note that this has no additional movement so it is locked at 30-feet unlike the bonus action. Secondly the AC: 1 bonus is against the attack which makes this similar to Duelist however it is far less than the 4e prestige feat gives which is +2 to AC and Saves until the end of the round. The Eladrin still suffers any damage but if possible may move 30-feet by teleport.

Bonus vs Reaction – **Changed the wording here so now whenever you fey step to within melee the 1st paragraphs descriptions happen. Arguable using this as a reaction may be the best way to use this but that really depends on the situation you are in.

Usage – 5e and 4e have very different estimations on what is a short rest. In 4e 5 minutes in 5e its at least one hour. In 4e an Eladrin which was far more fleshed out than 5e so far could have been perceived as intuitively being able to Fey Step but with some minor cost to stamina, enough so that they would need to catch their breath to do it again. In 5e this catching of your breath is over an hour… the implications are huge for a race that notably applies teleportation to its combat.

I am not saying that 4e did it right or wrong, only that the difference comes to a massive nerf to fey step which I didn’t think was warranted. Misty step is good but it isn’t campaign breaking as the same things that will stop any mage would stop an Eladrin from anything it would do with Misty Step from 1st level to 20th.

With that said it wasn’t the combat applications that prompted me to add the 1 minute cool down, it was the out of combat utility. However I believe that if an Eladrin is in your campaign and you have a puzzle that is bypassed in some way by Misty Step then it isn’t the fault of the spell or the player or even you or the material. It’s just an Eladrin figuring out how to solve a puzzle the way an Eladrin would. If the issue is the resource being available; this really matters for combat and I think a 1 minute CD is more than enough.

Finally – I hope the feat ended up good, I think it’s in the right place with how it looks right now, if you want you could set it to a 5 minutes CD which would make it closer to the 4e version with regards to the base Fey Step. It’s also important to note that in 5e Fey Step itself was nerfed royally. In 4e Fey Step was simply a kind of movement in 5e it is a spell which means all the things that could hinder a spell caster can hinder this racial feature.

If you do go with 5 minute CD I’d suggest a caveat to subtract 30 seconds per your intelligence modifier. This kind of means this feat attracts wizardly types for the same reasons a fighter or a ranger might be interested in it, only they would have to use it in different ways.

In the end this feat is supposed to be fun as well as clearly something unique to the race while a thing only possible through training. I hope it comes across that way.

JohnD
October 5th, 2017, 19:24
These races are in the DMG.

ArcebU
October 5th, 2017, 19:46
@JohnD

I'm not sure what you're trying to say, could you elaborate?

Zacchaeus
October 5th, 2017, 23:43
He means that those two races are detailed in the Dungeon Master Guide. And in the last patch a player version of the DMG was released so that players could access them more easily.

ArcebU
October 6th, 2017, 14:03
I'm still not sure what that has to do with what is posted here.

I'm talking about Feats for the DMG races, are there already feats for DMG races in the DMG? I must not have seen them.

LordEntrails
October 6th, 2017, 15:14
I'm still not sure what that has to do with what is posted here.

I'm talking about Feats for the DMG races, are there already feats for DMG races in the DMG? I must not have seen them.
Have you tried looking in the DMG players guide? If the feats are in the printed books they should be in FG too. If you are talking about Unearthed Arcana content, none of that will be in the official products since UA is not official content. But, one of the forum members here has done a UA module on the DMsGuild. I don't have the link, but I do hear that it is very well done.

But, I think you are suggesting homebrew racial feats and wanted to discuss those? Sorry, but I think you got most of us confused with the posts so I'm not sure we know what to respond to.

ArcebU
October 6th, 2017, 16:16
Didn't realize, sorry about that.

No, I checked the DMG and there are no racial feats specific to the DMG Aasmir and Eladrin.

I rambled a little about the UA's weird way of doing some of the racial feats so maybe that part confused some folks.

But yes the idea was to get feed back on the feats themselves not the races, or to see what others may come up with.

The High Druid
October 8th, 2017, 01:37
Eladrin Skirmish

I don't think ''free action" exists in 5E, so using that term will only confuse people.

ArcebU
October 13th, 2017, 21:02
"You can also interact with one object or feature of the
environment for free, during either your move or your
action." ~190 PHB

It isn't as established as 4e but its hinted at enough that it felt okay to use the term.

Proper phrasing might be to say "as part of your movement" rather than "as a free action" but both infer the same thing as you only get one free action a round.

ArcebU
November 21st, 2017, 20:56
Update:: 2/7/2018:::
Update: I got a chance to test this out across some games. I thought of Fey Step more along adventuring grounds but realized that being able to teleport 5 feet 4 times in combat is pretty strong as is.

The feat however was made too broad, this is a combat oriented feat not an exploration feat and trying to find a middle ground was too much to pack in there.

So 20 feet of fey step movement makes more sense from a combat perspective, especially for a racial feature.

There are some other changes I made but I don't have the exact wording available, when I do I'll update this one further.
--------------------------------------------------------

Eladrin for Unearthed Arcana

So there was a UA Eladrin it's simple enough so I figured I'd give making a feat for it a shot. I probably wont try Volo's Aasmir because it is way too complex.

Personally I'm not a big fan of the UA Eladrin but w/e.

I don't like getting cantrips on my Eladrin the same way I don't like having misty step on my high elf. Fey Ancestry is more than enough of a reminder that the two are related.

Eladrin Skirmish (UA)-

Prerequisites: Eladrin

You increase your Dexterity, Intelligence or Charisma by 1.

You now have 20-feet of Fey Step movement and you may spend this movement in parts or in whole. So if you use 5 feet of fey step movement to have 15 feet of fey step movement left.

Your martial training has borne fruit: When you fey step to within 5-feet of a target you can as a bonus action make a melee weapon attack at that target. If you damage a creature with this attack it is unable to take reactions against you until the end of its turn.

When a creature within 30-feet attacks you with a weapon or spell, you may as a reaction add +1 to your AC. If the attack would miss or is saved against (after any damage or effect) move using fey step.

You regain all of your fey step movement after a short rest.